News : December 2005

Gotomobile

Digital Web Magazine contributor Kelly Goto, most known for her book Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow that Works and publisher of the gotoreport, announced the launch of Gotomobile, a blog about mobile usability design and user experience research & testing. Post it on Del.icio.us and pull the RSS feed into your feed reader, this is going to be one to remember.

Resurrect Your Writing, Redeem Your Soul

Brothers and sisters gather 'round. We are all sinners, yes indeed, guilty of speaking in tongues on the Web at the expense of our audience. We sacrifice clarity on the altar of trite platitudes and worship pagan buzzwords. Fear not, for salvation is certain for the faithful. Let our own Jennie Robinson, copy editor extraordinaire, show the way to Resurrect Your Writing, Redeem Your Soul.

CSS Filters

Kevin Smith (the "other" Kevin Smith) has created a very handy CSS Filters chart to give you a better perspective of what filters (a type of CSS hack) to use in what situations. I highly recommend you take note of this page if you are doing any cross-browser CSS based layouts.

Ambient Findability book review

Peter Morville co-wrote Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites and with it, co-fathered a profession for those who focus on naming, classifying and organizing the Web. In this issue, D. Keith Robinson, former editor in chief of Digital Web Magazine, reviews Peter's new book, Ambient Findability. Does it deserve a place on your nightstand? Let Keith help you decide. Read more...

Microformats Primer

You may have already heard and learned about microformats in your Web wanderings. For those that haven't been exposed to the possibilities and benefits of these nuggets of semantic best practices, View Source Columnist Garrett Dimon returns this week with an excellent primer. Read more...

Josh Petersen speaking at Idea Day tonight

For those in the Seattle area, tonight is the second ever Idea Day. Josh Petersen, the CEO of Robot Co-Op, makers of 43 Things is going to be speaking about Web 2.0. His talk is oddly titled "What Ben Franklin can teach us about Web 2.0" ...this should be interesting. Don't forget to show up early for social hour at 6 PM. Josh hits the stage at 7 PM. Snack and drinks will be served, but best to eat dinner before you show up.

Rethinking Application Design

Dirk Knemeyer believes that many of today's corporate application design teams are too big and shortsighted. In the end, users suffer the consequences of Web applications cobbled and not crafted. Dirk's latest “Innovating the Web Experience” column offers his advice on how teams can avoid the bloat and overcome the myopia. Read more...

Say-So launches

Nate Steiner tells me that Twinsparc has launched Say-So, a free-form discussion generating tool. They have more details about how it works here. Nate says "The main focus of the tool (and reason for making it) is to allow anyone to gather feedback on an idea without needing a full fledged blog, and with more control over the 'structure' of the responses." Go check it out.

Navy.com goes XHTML 1.0 Strict

Dave Linabury tells me that he and his employer, Campbell-Ewald, have just launched a major redesign of Navy.com. The design has a very solid grid, lots of Ajax and of course all of the XHTML strict and standards compliance goodies you'd expect from the company who also pulled off the redesign of Chevrolet.comtwice. Congrats to Dave and the whole team at CE for a job well done!

Your Total Site closes

Garrett Dimon talked to me a few days ago about a decision he had to make. I tried to offer solutions for a win/win situation for him, but none seemed to shine through. Today Garrett announced that he is closing down Your Total Site. Not because lack of interest or anything, but because he has some other projects he wants to focus his free time on. I am still encouraging him to get community support for the site to keep it going without his hand but with his vision... Not sure if he likes the idea of allowing total strangers run it, so I don't know if that's even a possibility but one can hope. In any case Your Total Site will be truly missed. I just hate seeing a good thing go.

YackPack

BJ Fogg has launched his new start-up called YackPack which is a social software service that I feel is probably going to give sites like Classmates.com, Connection, LinkedIn, and so forth a bit of a run for their money. YackPack isn't just interesting because of who is behind it or who it's competition is, it's interesting because it's easier to use than email and kids as young as 3 can use it. I have high hopes for this one.